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JAT November 21 Meeting Announcement Richard Thieme
OCTOBER 17 JAT MEETING REPORT Richard Thieme
JAT Board Report for October 1998 Kathy Taji
Membership Secretary's Report Jeremy Whipple
翻訳ドキュメント作成支援ソフトの評価
−TRADOS Workbenchの主要機能と用途− 佐藤幸浩 (Hiro Sato)
October 1998 JAT Member Interview
(conducted by Leslie Tkach)
More on "How 20-00s and 20-10s be called?" Emily Shibata-Sato
On Saturday November 21, 1998 JAT will welcome Ichiro Shirahata and Matthias Heyn from Trados Japan K.K. to speak at our monthly session. The meeting will be held from 2:30-4:30 p.m. at the Shiba Seinen Kaikan, 2-1-20 Shiba Minato-ku Tokyo.
Trados is a well known producer of assistance programs tools for translators. There products involve building memories of translations to assist translators in developing speed and accuracy in their production. As all of us know from the Web, machine translation has made considerable advances over the past several years, and companies are finally beginning to produce products that some translators find of use. Trados is one of these companies, and they have graciously agreed to come and give a presentation on the advantages of their product, and how it can possibly be of assistance.
October's monthly meeting welcomed Ken Matsushima who discussed his website on Edo Japan, at http://www.us-japan.org/EdoMatsu. The session focused on the mechanics of the site, how Ken decided to make an Internet on this topic, copyright issues involved, the business potential of the Internet, and techniques of making your site known.
Ken conceived of this site as an educational site for young people to learn about Japan. The site sprung from a letter he received from his nieces in the US, asking for help in a school project. He then sent off an e-mail with a considerable amount of graphics and HTML code, including some ukiyoe images he had scanned into his computer. From this he conceived the idea of making a home page on the Internet, which people could access from anywhere in the world, to get information on pre-Meiji Japan.
The website itself is based on an interactive story of a young adolescent on a trip to Edo to seek adventure. The site leads you into Edo from the old checkpoint at Rokugo no Watashi, whereupon it takes through Ikegami Honmonji, Shinagawa, Senkakuji and into central Edo. Each page has a variety of options, with various ukiyoe prints springing up. One of the prints is of a women playing a shamisen, where Ken discusses the pleasure quarters. Ken mentioned that he had some reservations about this, as he intended the site for a young audience. Nevertheless he felt that it was enough of a part of Edo to warrant inclusion.
A further concern he had was about intellectual property. Ken's use of graphics was intrinsic to his site, and he had some anxiety about the various legal issues involved. Fortunately for him, his graphics are scans from Edo period Japanese art, and thus the copyrights themselves have long lapsed. Nevertheless, the prints themselves are frequently owned by a collection, and thus he felt that he should ask for permission for their use. In his case he found that he rarely had any problem in getting permission. A further issue of course was how to protect his own intellectual property, and he commented that he has not put that much effort into it, although he did note that one of his images is now being used on another site.
The site itself has been highly successful. Since establishing the site a year ago, Ken has received almost 28,000 visitors, and he has gotten responses from all over the world, ranging from Latin America to Bulgaria. Ken mentioned in his speech that while many sites on the web offer attractive topics, relatively few of them offer substantive content. And this is one reason that he believes his site has been popular. When he started the site he decided to pick one topic and cover it in depth. This involved putting in a tremendous amount of time, but has proven personally rewarding. Work included building the HTML files, laying out the site, providing options for the reader to make the site feel interactive, and making graphics that move. This last feature includes a young girl opening a shoji screen at the start of the site, as well as having the young woman with the shamisen actually move her fingers to the sound of the instrument being played. All of these elements have assisted in keeping people interested, which has resulted in return visits to the site.
A further factor in the success of the site is promotion. Having sites mentioned on search engines, and receiving prizes from websites that rate home pages are all elements in getting the word out about who you are and what you do. And once a site is listed on a few search engines, other engines will pick up your site and spread the word even further. For Ken, this recognition has been very gratifying, on a personal level, and has encouraged him to keep adding content.
Although the site began out of reasons of personal interest, Ken commented that he sees a major market for translators coming out of the Internet. More and more people are designing websites, and the need for multilingual materials is growing for companies. Ken noted that he sees a gap on the Internet between Japan and the English speaking world. There is a substantial amount of material in Japanese on Japan, and a tremendous amount of material in English on other countries. But there is not a lot of substantive material in Japanese about other countries, nor is there a tremendous amount of material in English about Japan. One aspect of this gap has been to enable someone to become an "instant expert" fairly quickly. A person can study a topic that interests him and within a matter of weeks compile a site that has more content than any other site on that particular topic, whether it be Japanese baseball, netsuke or pachinko. Another aspect of this gap, is the potential market. As companies come to want bilingual sites, there will be a growing demand for people who not only can translate but can also build websites, from start to finish.
Ken then presented a discussion of who is making money on the web. As of the present the dominant money makers are pay sites offering pornographic content. Nevertheless, Ken commented that this was true in the early stages of VCRs, cable TV and much of the communication media. As the web grows and matures other entities will be getting into the action, and here those who can help compile content will be able to market their skills. Thus for him compiling a home page was both a matter of personal interest and an investment to gain skills that he thinks will be of use in the future.
The JAT directors' meeting was held on October 17, 1998 from 12:30 to 2:30
at the Shiba Seinen Kaikan. It was attended by Bill Lise, Bob Oliver,
Emily Shibata-Sato, Kathleen Taji, Richard Thieme, George Tokikuni, and
Jeremy Whipple.
Leslie Tkach was absent and Judy Wakabayashi in Australia was not present.
The following items of business were discussed.
1. Treasurer's Report (Bob Oliver)
As of September 30, 1998, there was a balance of 7,654,894 yen in the JAT
treasury. A total of 500,000 yen was transferred to the IJET Kyoto account
on Oct. 12, 1998. In addition, the rent in the amount of 264,000 yen for
the meeting room at the Shiba Seinen Kaikan for the following year was paid
on October 17, 1998.
2. Membership Secretary's Report (Jeremy Whipple)
An interim membership report will no longer be submitted to the board as
has been done in the past. The official report which will be submitted to
the JAT Bulletin at the end of each month will stand as the official report
for the board.
3. Program Director's Report (Richard Thieme)
Andrew Horvat who was contacted by Leslie Tkach as a potential speaker for
the JAT meeting in December was not available for that month. In lieu of
Andrew Horvat, Kathleen Taji contacted H. Tsuruoka, head of the
international section of the Japan Medical Association who has agreed to be
the JAT speaker for December.
Jeremy Whipple has informed the board that Duncan Macintyre of SAI would like to be a JAT speaker in future.
The Meet-the-Candidates meeting scheduled in January '99 will be combined with a Shinnen Kai. A brief introduction of the candidates will be held prior to the start of the party.
4. Website Committee (Bill Lise, Jeremy Whipple)
Leslie Tkach will be placed in charge of updating the website on JAT
monthly meetings which was done by Bill Lise in the past. Leslie will also
be responsible for posting advanced notices on tentative speakers at the
bottom of the website page. It was pointed out that the drawback to
posting advanced notices on speakers was possible changes due to last
minute cancellations. However, it was concluded that despite this
shortcoming, advanced notices will be posted and it was recommended that
Richard Thieme, program director, mention the guest speaker for the
following month in his JAT Meeting Announcement to members.
It was agreed that Friedemann Horn (IJET Kyoto operating committee member) who will be responsible for uploading information on IJET-2000 on the website will be included in the JAT website committee.
The Japanese version of the "About JAT" English website page has been translated by George Tokikuni and uploaded by Leslie Tkach to the JAT website.
5. IJET Report (Bill Lise, George Tokikuni)
The operating committee meeting held in Osaka on October 3 was attended by
Bill Lise and Bob Oliver.
The Japanese and English names for the IJET conference in Kyoto slated in
2000 were discussed by the board and decided as follows.
The Japanese name for the IJET conference in Kyoto scheduled in 2000 will
be 第N回英日・日英翻訳国際会議。
The English name will be IJET-2000 (the addition of the site name or
location will be decided by the Kyoto operating committee, e.g. IJET-2000
Kyoto, IJET-2000@Kyoto, IJET-2000京都, etc.) and all IJET conferences
thereafter will revert back to the established practice of naming according
to number, i.e. IJET-12 in 2001, IJET-13 in 2002, etc. with or without the
site name.
The decision to reimburse travel costs of operating committee members attending the meetings in Osaka will be made by the operating committee which will be responsible for paying all IJET related expenses from the IJET Kyoto account. However, the travel costs of selected JAT directors who will attend some of the meetings in Osaka as advisors will be reimbursed by the JAT treasury.
6. Bookshelf Project (George Tokikuni)
In order to revise the existing Bookshelf into a more viable and easy to
use resource, the information contained in each category will be reviewed.
The project is divided into the following three stages.
a. Review the current content of the Bookshelf.
b. Receive new input.
c. Compile new data that will be included in a separate URL.
The issues that need to be addressed are what software will be used, how the Bookshelf will be placed on the website, and the possibility of including a search function. These issues will be discussed with Leslie Tkach, website director, whose assistance will be solicited in these areas.
7. International Journal Project (Judy Wakabayashi)
A proposal to combine various newsletters on Japanese/English translation
of different organizations (JAT Bulletin, Japanese Network Bulletin, Forum,
JLD Times, Switch) into one single substantial publication which would be
sponsored by JAT was submitted to the board by Judy Wakabayashi. The aim
of such a publication will be to provide better quality content that would
reach a wider readership and which would serve as a source of
resource-sharing. The majority consensus of the board was in support of
such an endeavor and a letter of proposal has been sent to the editors of
the other journals by Judy. Further discussion and review of this proposal
will be pursued based on the responses received from the other editors.
Compiled by Kathleen Taji
JAT Recording Secretary
e-mail: ktaji@gol.com
Here are some statistics for JAT membership as of the end of October 1998:
Membership 300*
Overseas 124 (41%)
*Total includes pending renewals for September (4) and October (9).
JAT-LIST
subscribed 262
not 38
Open directory <http://www.jat.org/opendir.html
listed 163
New members
October 9
Jeremy Whipple mailto:membership@jat.org
佐藤幸浩 (Hiro Sato)
備考：
内容が込み入っていますので、要点のみを把握したい方は、「2手順」を省略してお
読みください。
11月21日のJAT月例会では、TRADOSのスタッフを講演者に迎え、本製品の説明をして
いただくことになっております。
本記事は、特定の企業の宣伝を目的にはしておりません。
1. 概要
昨今、翻訳ドキュメント作成支援ソフト（筆者の独断でこう呼ぶことにする）が脚光 を浴びている。翻訳ドキュメント作成支援ソフトには、以前に訳したパターンをメモ リーに保存し、次回に同じようなパターンが出現した場合に、以前の翻訳のパターン を流用するという機能（筆者の独断でこの機能をトランスレーションメモリーと呼 ぶ）をそなえている。翻訳ソフトとは異なり翻訳自体は行わない。今回の簡易実験で は、TRADOS Workbenchを用いて、翻訳ドキュメント作成支援ソフトの機能を検討して みた。
2. 手順
ソフト名： TRADOS Workbench Ver 2.0 （Demo Version）
デモ版では、正規版と機能はまったく変わらない。しかし、本ソフトの心臓部ともい
えるメモリー収録翻訳パターン数がデモ版では100セットに制限されている。またマ
ニュアルがないため、インストールが非常に難しい。
TRADOS Workbenchの機能と作業： 翻訳文セットのメモリー収録機能。翻訳対象の 原文と似ている翻訳文セットをメモリーから呼び出す機能。差分抽出機能。作業は TRADOS WorkbenchのウィンドウとMS-Wordのウインドウの2つを表示しながら作業を する。TRADOS Workbenchの作業過程は、「新規の文は訳者が翻訳、そしてメモリーに 保存」と、「メモリーに収録されている訳文を参照して流用」の2種類の作業で進んで いく。
(1) 通常翻訳とトランスレーションメモリーへの訳文収録
次の文章を使用した。ここでSとTが対訳関係になっている（例： S1-1とT1‐1が対訳 関係）。まずこれらの文章をTRADOSのシステム上で翻訳者が翻訳し、同時にトランス レーションメモリーに収録していく。ここで、以下の文章のセットを第1版とする。
(S1-1) SECTION 5 CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT
(T1-1) 第5章 ＣPUの概要
(S1-2) The CPU-4, the instruction processing module of the N58300 family, is
based on the industry-standard NC58000 processor.
(T1-2) CPU-4は、N58300ファミリの命令処理モジュールで、業界標準のNC58000プロ
セッサをベースにしております。
(2) トランスレーションメモリーの有効利用
ここでは、第1版の改定版の翻訳依頼を受けた場合を想定して、例文を用意した。以 下の文章（S2-1、S2-2）を第2版とする。
(S2-1) SECTION 6 CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT
(S2-2) The CPU-5, the instruction processing module of the N58300 family, is
based on the high- performance and industry-standard NC58000 processor.
これらの英文は、第1版の英文と共通部分が多い。こらまでは、第2版は第2版のみで 完全に新規翻訳していた。第2版と第1版の差分を拾い出してみると次のようになる。 [ ] 変更個所、<> 追加個所
(S2-1) SECTION [6] CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT
(S2-2) The CPU-[5], the instruction processing module of the N58300 family,
is based on the <high- performance and> industry-standard NC58000 processor.
第2版の作業に際しては、第1版で収録したトランスレーションメモリーから、対象翻 訳文と対象翻訳文と似たような翻訳のセットを呼び出しながら作業する。TRADOS WorkbenchウィンドウとMS-Wordのウインドウの2画面作業となる。
＜TRADOS Workbenchウィンドウ ＞
＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋
翻訳対象の文章
The CPU-[5], the instruction processing module of the
N58300 family, is based on the <high- performance and>
industry-standard NC58000 processor.
（第2版）
＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋
メモリー内の第1版
の対訳セットThe CPU-4, the instruction processing module of the
N58300 family, is based on the industry-standard NC58000 processor.
CPU-4は、N58300ファミリの命令処理モジュールで、業界標準
のNC58000プロセッサをベースにしております。
＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋
＜MS-Wordのウインドウ＞
＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋
翻訳対象の文章
（第2版）
The CPU-5, the instruction processing module of the
N58300 family, is based on the high- performance and
industry-standard NC58000 processor.
← 訳文を入力または流用
＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋＋
3. 考察
これまでは、第2版の翻訳に際し、この手の作業は次のような手作業の工程で進んで
いた。
第1版翻訳後（第1版の英文と和文あり）
1. 第2版の英文原稿（紙焼き）入手
2. 第1版の英文原稿と第2版英文原稿の差分抽出
3. 抽出した差分を第1版和文に赤入れ反映
4. 赤入れした第1版和文を手直し、それを第2版の原稿とし編集し直し
TRADOS Workbenchでは、2.と3.の部分をコンピュータのトランスレーションメモリー
機能で行う。
翻訳ドキュメント作成支援ソフトの評価。
1. 大量で繰り返しが多い場合に役立つ
訳語統一ができる。前に訳した部分の再訳の手間が省ける。
2. 能力が劣る翻訳者でも操作が可能
新規の訳は省いて、前に訳したものを参照し流用しながらであれば、少々能力が劣る
翻訳者でも翻訳可能である。新規に翻訳する部分のみを切り分けて、能力の高い翻訳
者に依頼することも可能である。
3. 少量で多品種には役に立たない
トランスレーションメモリーの特徴を発揮できないので、少量多品種では役に立たな
い。
4. 翻訳ドキュメント作成の全工程では時間短縮が可能（筆者主観）
コンピュータの処理時間や複雑なコマンドなどにより、翻訳のみではさほど時間の短
縮には役立たないだろう。しかし、上に1〜4の作業プロセス全体で考えると、2.と3.
の工程を大幅に短縮できるので、全体的には時間短縮が可能である。
5. 複数翻訳者で作業が可能
ネットワーク環境に対応しているため、複数の翻訳者が分担して作業することができ
る。
6. 多国語への翻訳の場合に便利
本ソフトは多国語対応なので、特定の言語のみに翻訳する場合よりも、多国語への翻
訳の場合に有利である。
4. あとがき
本ソフトの価格： 一式約40万円
デモ版はTRADOSの東京支社に連絡すれば入手可。また、TRADOSは、コンピュータ関連
展示会やデータベース関連展示会などにしばしば出展しているので、そこで実物を見
ることができます。
TRADOSホームページ： http://www.trados.com
連絡先：
TRADOS Japan KK
Tel: 03-3568-7072
Akasaka Wing Bldg. 4F, 6-6-15 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 107-0052, Japan
コンピュータの要求仕様：
OS: Window95またはWindows NT
CPU： 133MHZ（筆者主観による快適動作レベル） PentiumのCPU（メーカー推奨仕
様）
メモリー： 24MB（筆者主観による快適動作レベル） 16MB（メーカー推奨仕様）
ディスプレイサイズ： 17インチ以上（画面を複数表示するのでディスプレイは大き
いほどよい）
以上
佐藤幸浩 (Hiro Sato)
This month, JAT's "Interview by Email" is with Adam Rice. Adam has been extremely active in JAT and is the manager of the HONYAKU website, a very valuable resource for not only E-J and J-E translators but translators and interpreters in general. Recently, in his spare time, Adam has been organizing the next IJET conference to be held in Austin, Texas, in May 1999 -- no doubt a huge job to tackle and manage. He is the alternate half of JAT's first husband- wife translating duo (our interview with his wife, Jenny Rice, appeared in last month's Bulletin). Enjoy!
Q. What is your education and experience background? How did it lead to translating?
Q. B.A., University of Texas 1984 in Asian Studies. I studied Japanese all through college, as well as other classes on Japanese art and politics. This all sounds very diligent and goal-directed, but I really just started taking Japanese in the first place because it seemed different and interesting. I stuck with it because I liked it, and after a while it just made sense to pick Asian Studies as my major, so I rounded out my Japanese education with other related classes.
At some point when I was a junior in college, I decided that I needed to do something with all this fancy book-learning, like go to Japan. I tried to get into the Monbusho's JET program, but that didn't work out, so I literally just got on a plane and went over with no plan in mind more concrete than teaching English conversation. I discovered I didn't like that at all, nor did I like a couple of other jobs I drifted through while in Tokyo, but after I had been there about a year, I decided (with considerable encouragement from my girlfriend of the time) I would try my hand at translating. I sort of posted a reverse want-ad on TWICS, and got an in-house translation job. The rest is history.
Q. How long have you been a translator?
A. My first in-house job started in 1989, so about 9 years.
Q. What was your first translation job?
A. It was as a translator/checker at a small agency in Tokyo. When I started out, I was just hopeless as a translator. I didn't know how much I didn't know. I was working directly under a Japanese man with very precise English, and he meticulously edited my work, answered all my stupid questions, and basically whipped me into shape to be a tolerable translator.
Q. Do you live in Japan? (Why or why not?)
A. No. Why? Well, getting a visa would present some logistical problems, since I am a freelancer and can't rely on a spouse visa. Also, anywhere I live is going to be a trade-off. Certainly there are aspects of like in Japan that I miss here, but on balance, I think I am happier where I am.
Q. How many languages are you familiar with? Do you translate into or from those languages?
A. Japanese is the only language I know well enough to translate (and even that is open to debate). I know a little French. I've studied a couple other languages along the way (Chinese and Hebrew) but retain absolutely nothing of them.
Q. How did you learn Japanese? (or English or other languages that you translate into or from)?
A. I did study formally in college for 3.5 years. Once I arrived in Japan I learned how inadequate that education was. Living in Japan was a huge education in the language, of course. Also, as I said, my agency experience was a real learning experience in being a J-E translator, more than in Japanese in general.
Q. What are some of the challenges you face as a translator with regards to Japanese?
A. Oh brother. That's tough. Most jobs have some kind of challenge. In many
cases, they boil down to the following:
1) Coming up with English that sounds realistic;
2) Imposing a strict meaning on a vague passage;
3) BS-ing my way through a term or passage I don't understand as well as
I'd like to;
4) Using my amazing powers of ESP to ascertain how much leeway the client
will permit me in terms of loose translation style.
There are no doubt others, but those are the main categories of problems I can think of.
Q. How do you get your clients?
A. Through referrals from fellow translators and through IJET. I met my three most reliable clients over the years at various IJETs.
Q. How do you keep up with your clients in Japan?
A. It hasn't been much of an issue. All of my clients in Japan have e-mail, but for the most part, they fax me work and I do it. There's not a lot of interaction beyond that. When there's an urgent matter, I use the phone. When it isn't urgent, I use e-mail.
I have one client with whom I never had any interaction other than e-mail for quite a long time. They always use e-mail for sending jobs, or even send me a URL and tell me "translate that" (I wish more clients were like this). At one point they sent me a job while I was visiting Japan--this was interesting, since they didn't know I was there. I accepted the job and suggested we finally meet face-to-face. We did, and it was a nice meeting.
One interesting aside: a few years ago, when Jenny and I were on one of our periodic trips to Tokyo we set up three clients with Internet accounts on GOL, more for our own convenience than anything else. We had been using various semi-satisfactory ways of returning files to them until then. They all basically knew that they ought to get Internet accounts, but just hadn't gotten around to it. We did the actual setting-up work for them.
Q. What are your fields of specialization? Why? How do you keep up with new developments?
A. A lot of my work has to do with computers or telecoms in some capacity. I am inherently interested in these topics, and read up on them online pretty often. Some of my work has to do with marketing, and I find that the best way to educate myself for that is to read the paper and to shop with a critical eye for how business works.
Q. Is your translation style "loose" or "literal"?
Usually it is pretty loose. The better I understand something, the looser it gets. I rarely get into the extensive restructuring of texts that I have seen a few translators do--I have respect for their integrity, but don't feel comfortable, say, re-arranging chapters in a book.
Q. Do you read other books or magazines written in the source language in our spare time?
A. Not as much as I ought to--just a little bit.
Q. What are some of your favourite reference materials? (What's on your bookshelf within easy reach right now?)
Q. I've been using Unidict (an electronic J<>E and kanji dictionary--it's a commercial version of Edict) a lot lately, and it is very handy. Not perfect, but a good start. Great for names and unknown kanji compounds.
I keep Nelson's and Kenkyusha's on my desk most of the time. I also like using Kodansha's Nihongo Daijiten. One dictionary I recommend very highly is Shogakkan's "Saishin Nichibei Hyougen Jiten." This is a thematically-organized dictionary, with a lot of useful reference information--the Section 1 companies from the TSE, org charts for the Japanese government ministries, etc.
Q. What is the singular (or more if you can think of any!) most important piece of advice you can give to people just starting out in translation?
A. Make sure you have a personality that is suited to translating. I think this means an attention to detail, intellectual curiosity, a love of language, the ability to concentrate on a single document for a long time, without much human interaction.
Q. What do you think are the most important elements or skills necessary in translation? Will these change in 5 or 10 years?
A. The web has certainly changed the way I think about reference sources--being able to take advantage of the web is an important skill.
Also, having a big corpus of my own work in electronic form, where I can quickly search out the way I handled a term in the past is an important evolution in the way people translate. The tools to do this are only going to get better. So having the ability to take maximum advantage of one's own work history will become more important.
Japan's economy may be going into a long-term decline, and may not be such a great source of work (or high-paying work, anyhow) in the future. This will mean either diversifying into different languages or different services in order to keep making money.
Q. Are you still going to be translating 5 or 10 years from now? Do you think the profession will change and how?
A. I think I half-answered this above. I hope I'll still be translating in 10 or even 20 years, because I enjoy doing it.
Q. How much time per day do you spend translating (and editing and related activities) versus doing administrative work, clients relations, and other "running-the-business" type of activities?
A. I spend as little time as possible on "running-the-business" activities. I spend about 2 minutes per job on invoicing and actually sending the job. Client relations are practically a non-issue, since my clients and I have a good working relationship and understand each other pretty well. I don't do as much business cultivation as I ought to, but then again, I've never had much success with that in the past.
Q. Please describe your work area.
A. My office, which I share with my wife Jenny, is a bedroom in our house. It is about 14' square. It's a very convenient setup. The room has its own door to the outside and has windows on two other walls, so it gets good light and good ventilation. We have two big bookcases and two big desks on opposite sides of the room. Our computers and printer are all on a network, and the network hub runs to a neighbor's ISDN router, which is always logged on. Having a permanent connection is an amazing convenience--you don't realize how nice it is until you go on a trip or something, and actually have to dial into an ISP to get your e-mail or check the weather forecast.
My desk is big--60" by 30". It is cluttered with an inbox, my computer, my phone, bills, dictionaries, papers I haven't gotten around to filing or trashing yet, and other random bits of junk. It is my dream to make a wraparound desk so that I can be ensconced in reference materials.
Q. What do you like about translating?
A. I like the mental challenge. Well, I like it except when it is *really* challenging me. Then I hate it. I like the freedom of being a freelancer. I like knowing that I earn every penny I get. I like the community of translators I associate with.
I like those rare occasions when I produce a document that really feels like a quality piece of craftsmanship. I like it when I whip out a 500 word newspaper article translation and know it is dead-on with correct industry jargon and tight wording, and then I can go to lunch.
Q. What do you dislike about translating?
A. I dislike it when the work dries up. I dislike it when the client makes unreasonable demands. I really dislike it when the client of the client of the client has made an unreasonable demand, and that just trickles down to me, and I can't really complain to the person responsible for creating the problem because he is three levels higher than me in the job-flow hierarchy. I dislike it when circumstances prevent me from doing a good job. I dislike it when I find myself in over my head.
Q. What was your most interesting or unique translation job?
A. I've had a few I thought were pretty neat. I translated a journal article about CAD software for making prosthetic limbs. This covered a lot of disciplines--medicine, computing, and machining.
Leslie: Thank you very much, Adam!!!
Adam's coordinates are: Adam Rice, Austin, Texas, USA adamrice@crossroads.net http://www.crossroads.net
If you enjoyed this interview and would like to be "interviewed by email" (since many of our readers live outside the Tokyo/Tsukuba area and I can't get to you to interview you in person), please contact Leslie Tkach at tkach@gol.com.
Emily Shibata-Sato
Some time ago in this bulletin I asked how the first decade of the next millennium will be called in Japanese (ゼロ年代？) and the first&second decades be called in English (oh-ohs and tens?).
Paul Gray suggested to call them "the twenty-hundreds ('00s)" and "twenty-tens ('10s)" but I have not yet seen/heard them used by the media. Have you?
OTH I found that a Japanese linguist was wondering the same thing at the beginning of this decade as quoted below:
... うっかりして＜21世紀は＞2000年からだと思っている人が... まだまだあるようだ。2000年は20世紀最後の年である。...
十年ひと昔、ということばはあるものの、日本には十年ごとを区切って 何十年代とする考えも呼び方もなかった。戦後になって外国の影響で 生まれた。70年代からよく耳にするようになった。70年代の日本は どうなるか、80年代をいかに生きるか、などが話題になったりした。 50年代、60年代というのはあまり使われなかったと思う。40年代と いうことばはおそらく存在しなかった(note: now used in a retrospective way)。
それはともかく、21世紀のはじめの9年を何というかも興味がある。 まさか〇年代とするわけにもいくまい。そして2010年からの十年を 10年代と呼ぶとすると、それは日本だけの特別の言い方になる。 英語国は言語的理由から10年代ということばがなくて、同調できない からである。これこそ先の先のことで、いま考えるには及ばないかも しれない。
戦前は正月になるとみんな一斉に年をとったものだ。生まれた子は そのとたんに１歳であった。いまは最初の誕生日が来るまでは ゼロ歳である。人生は一からでなくゼロから始まる。
数は１から始まるのに、０から始まるように感じることが多くなって いるのは、この年齢の数え方と、80年代、90年代といった呼び方が、 はじめに０ありき、の感覚を育ててきたためであろうか。
外山滋比古 「山茶花はなぜサザンカか（ことばの観察）」より （朝日新聞社、1990年 ISBN4-02-256215-3 ）
Japanese doesn't have words for "decade" or "millennium" (I see katakanized ミレニアム in the papers though) and in turn in English things are not measured in terms of 一万, like 万歩計.
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